October 4, 2020 - Smoke over Texas and Louisiana

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   On October 1, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
   (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
   Louisiana and Texas.

   Houston, Texas sits near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the west of
   the scene. In the east, the Mississippi River Valley divides Louisiana
   (west) from Mississippi. Swaths of gray smoke cover the greens and tans
   of the early autumn landscape of Texas and Louisiana. In a few areas,
   the smoke is so thick that it obscures the view of the landscape below.

   The smoke that covers these states originated in the West, most likely
   from the fires in Colorado and Wyoming. In wider views of MODIS images
   for the United States, smoke can be seen stretching from Colorado,
   dipping south to blanket Louisiana and Texas, and arcing upward to the
   coast of Delaware — a transit of more than 2,000 miles (3,219 km).
   While no large fires had been reported in the Southeast on October 1,
   early autumn is a time when farmers use fire for agricultural
   management in that region, so some of the smoke may arise from local
   sources.

   On October 2, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality observed on
   their website, “Moderate amounts of smoke from wildfires along the
   Rocky Mountain Front Range in Colorado and Wyoming will continue to
   fill in over the state behind the frontal boundary, though much of the
   smoke may remain aloft. Meanwhile, seasonal fires across portions of
   East/Southeast Texas and the Southeast U.S. may continue to contribute
   lighter amounts of smoke to overall particulate background levels as
   well. Overall, depending on the coverage and intensity of the smoke and
   considering the amount that may reach the surface, the daily PM2.5 AQI
   is forecast to reach the middle to upper end of the "Moderate" range in
   parts of the Houston and Victoria areas; the lower to middle end of the
   "Moderate" range in parts of the Austin, Beaumont-Port Arthur, Corpus
   Christi, Laredo, San Antonio, and Waco-Killeen areas; possibly the
   lower end of the "Moderate" range in parts of the Tyler-Longview area;
   and the upper end of the "Good" range (perhaps with an isolated low
   "Moderate" or two) in parts of the Amarillo, Brownsville-McAllen, and
   Dallas-Fort Worth areas. Additionally, slightly elevated urban fine
   particulate levels associated with light winds and limited vertical
   mixing could be enough to raise the daily PM2.5 and PM10 AQIs to the
   lower to middle end of the "Moderate" range in parts of the El Paso
   area as well, with highest concentrations in the morning and evening.”

   Image Facts
   Satellite:  Terra
   Date Acquired: 10/1/2020
   Resolutions:  1km (55.6 KB),  500m (213.1 KB),  250m (648.1
   KB)
   Bands Used:
   Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2020-10-04
 
